My work depicts simplified, illuminated scenes of nature as a metaphor for our internal world in a state of transience or incompleteness.

As a waterman and the son of a sailor, I’ve spent a lot of time on the waters of the west coast. I know these waters, and yet I can never really know them. The ocean is an endless variety of movement, light and feeling. We can see ourselves in its vastness and depths, its calm and its torrents. Water reflects back to us our inner worlds and emotions.

Using a mixed media approach to image making, I combine acrylic paint and C-print photographs. By layering these elements I can etch down into the emulsion of the photograph to reveal golden hues and also build up the surface with impasto and washes of colour. The result is an image with photo sharp detail in focal areas and painterly brush marks that obscure and create space for the imagination.  

I'm a Canadian artist with work featured internationally in galleries, art fairs, magazines, tv programs and many private collections. I am based in Toronto, Canada and work with a great team of galleries across Canada and US that exhibit and sell my work to clients around the world.

Steven Nederveen

I’ve been an artist since I was a kid, I never wanted anything else. From the time that I skipped a month of grade 1 to go finger paint with the preschoolers at the community centre to being represented by galleries these past 18 years, I can proudly say that I’ve been living my dream. It hasn’t always been easy, New York was definitely rough, and not all years are great years, but I eventually found my inspiration and my strength in nature. Nature slows things down and showed me the ease, connectedness, strength and adaptiveness that she operates by. She became my muse and has never stopped being amazing.

Hey, Fellow Dreamers...

Wonder where it all began? Here's me in my New York studio back in 2001. Eating chick peas from a can, showering at the Y, and nurturing my creative vision. Just look at how earnestly I'm writing in my sketchbook... awwwww baby artist.

The romanticized image of the starving artist paying their dues was in full effect. I thought this was the path to stardom but honestly it was rough. The rats, the break-ins and the uncertainty were hard, but hey, I was young and living it up in New York. The museums, cool art shows, great after-parties and an amazing group of friends supporting each other made the lows more bearable. I found myself leaving the city more and more, taking the Q Line out to Rockaway Beach so I could watch the surfers and feel the Atlantic air on my face. Eventually I felt the need to stay closer to my source of inspiration and came home to the vast wilderness of Canada.

I'm still painting from that same source of inspiration today.